by Rob Humanick
Watching Nosferatu is like standing in the same room as death itself, a brooding chamber piece of gothic ruminations and occult imagery, of the flickering light of the world waging a losing battle against the overwhelming darkness. Tod Browning's Dracula may be the more immediately recognized of the two earliest vampire features but it is Murnau's silent masterpiece to which the entire genre—and then some—owes its existence. Modern vampire culture, driven in large part by Anne Rice fans and their routinely fetishistic attractions toward the creatures of the night, is more superficially sexy than soulful, with an emphasis on the opportunities afforded by an eternal life and the fine line between death and ecstasy. Although not without these qualities in at least an implicit fashion, Nosferatu strips away anything that might possibly romanticize its titular character or the events that surround him: It bears witness to the festering rot of the soul, lingering on that which emanates from the dark corners of the world.
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To read the rest of the review at Slant, click here.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Nosferatu: The Ultimate DVD Edition
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1 comments:
Good stuff. I haven't seen "Vampyr," but I should check it out someday. I agree that the only other Dracula movie comparable to this is Herzog's '79 remake. I can't wait to watch this new DVD (I wish Amazon would hurry up and ship it). Both this and Herzog's felt like dreams to me, but different kinds of dreams. Murnau's movie instills dread, like watching a nightmare caught on film. Herzog's comes closer to instilling a more hypnotic, lingering sense to the events on screen (especially so in the scene where everyone is dancing and feasting in the streets because they believe they're all going to die anyway). Also, the opening credits sequence in "Phantom der Nacht" is a frightening way of stripping away the romantic vampire myth surrounding various other versions of Dracula. Both versions want to depict Dracula (or Orlock) as a ghoul, a kind of husk of what was once human, which I think is further played upon by the opening credits in the '79 remake. Although I feel that Herzog's movie is more sympathetic toward Dracula, whereas Murnau's movie paints him as more of a pure monster.
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